There was a comic book character called Bulletman in the 1940's, and I have to wonder if this episode was inspired by him. It still holds up today, and it's not even one of the stronger episodes.

1. The richness of detail in this cartoon. The use of shadowing, shading, and the use of color blends gives it the look of a fine painting. Modern cartoons use flat colors and a black-outlined line drawing style which gives a feeling of no depth to each character and scene, similar to a cardboard cutout.

2. This cartoon has perspective-based backgrounds which give it a further feeling of movement, realism, and depth. Modern cartoons, when they have a background (usually just some random streaks of color), it's just a flat line drawing with color fills which scrolls left or right to show movement and repeats the same background scene over and over.

3. The characters in this cartoon show complex and subtle body-language and facial expressions. Modern cartoons show the characters flickering back and forth between two extreme expressions, like flipping a card from one side to the other rapidly (anime is the worst in this regard. The whole of an anime cartoon has an apparent frame rate of 2-3 frames a second. That's dangerous to your health). When a modern cartoon character moves they appear to have an extreme nervous problem which causes them to jerk wildly from one position to another. You feel sorry for the characters because they seem to be in such serious difficulties all of the time.

On another note, one of the themes you see constantly repeated clear up to this day in films and TV is the fear of science and scientific progress. You see scientists/mad geniuses shown creating weapons to destroy or take over the world. In the real world, the only three groups that suffer from that particular madness are the heads of large corporations, military leaders, and politicians. Strangely, those three groups are very rarely shown attempting to do so in films and TV. So why the insistence on the stereo-typical picking on the scientist as the fall guy? Possibly the three groups above are attempting to shift the blame for what they do onto somebody else, like the murderer in a bad detective story. In any case, the situation gives much food for speculation and is another of those mysterious ways in which the entertainment industry functions as an apparent gauge of society's views.

As to the story in this cartoon, since Superman cartoons generally dealt with Super-scientists going out of control, the idea in this one is that some group has built a flying bullet car that can smash through buildings. The "Bulleteers", as they call themselves, proceed to blackmail Metropolis threatening to smash all of the important buildings. Lois Lane and Superman/Clark Kent team up to save the day. Fun stuff! You'll eat it up.

Superman battles a gang that has a bullet-shaped rocket/car in this Fleischer toon. As usual, this has great art deco styling, and Lois Lane stupidly gets overinvolved in the situation, requiring rescue from Superman. The highlight is the scene where Superman mounts the rocket/car and opens it up like a can opener to rescue Lois. Lois, of course, gets the scoop, making me wonder how Clark Kent manages to keep his job.
Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.